Hi jimbocam, and welcome to the forum....

i may be one of the joiners on here , but i prefer TETRION filler, (powder form) as it is easy to use, and most of the painter/decorators i know use it, and will not use any polyfilla/polycell stuff....

no doubt Hammy and/or  Cora will be along shortly and either put me straight on what they use or agree with me!!!

but Tetrion is not the best seller in trade circles for nothiong!!

in terms of the filling wood, is it going to be over painted afterwards, as if it is..then  either a wood stopper product, such as Liberon is good, or again if painted over you can use tetrion...being a screw hole it will need 2 applications, one to "plug" the hole and allow to set, the second application to fill just proud to allow you to sand down flush!, the same applies to the hinge rebates, but they will need a few applications, or if large enough , i personnaly would fill the rebate with a thin strip of timber glued in place, with the resultant edges filled and sanded smoooth once the wood glue has set on the strip of timber!

hope the above helps!!
WOLF!!

I tend to use Gyproc Easyfill on walls as its meant for drywall joints it sands very easily.

As for timber either two part epoxy filler like bondaglass supersoft or the easyfill if its just the odd hail nole in a bit of architrave.

Jason

Never had a problem with polyfilla fine surface. I would suggest that you are putting too much on and not smoothing it off enough.
You should use a good filling knife that is wider than the hole you are filling, lay it in with the knife at a low angle and the go over it again with the blade nearly vertical to remove excess. A stripping knife is not a good substitute.

Many years ago, I burnt a door off, primed it and filled with tetrion, u/c and gloss etc.
It flaked. The tetrion left the primer.  Got on to Tetrion and they said put it on bare wood, it doesn't like to be sandwiched between two coats of paint.

Never used it since.

Thanks for the wellcome Corablimey.

You were right about that Gyproc stuff going off quick but it is a joy to rub down when flattening out a large area. Have you used the Toupret fillers yet? Top quality and work wonders on concrete sills when they are being painted. Heard they are bringing out more ranges, may even rival Tetrion one day (not)